Category: media

A movie about infamous Canadian serial killers Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo is released this week, but movie theatres aren’t exactly clamoring to show it. Only 100 prints have been made, and so far only 60 copies have been booked.

Outgoing PBS president Pat Mitchell says that “the United States must fundamentally rethink the value of public broadcasting, because the cash-strapped service is now inhibited from taking programming risks or sticking with worthwhile shows. ‘Public broadcasting has got to have more resources. This is what I said on day one. I’ll say it on my exit’.”

Britain’s National Consumer Council warns that corporate entertainment digital security measures are eroding consumers’ rights. “Consumers face security risks to their equipment, limitations on their use of products, poor information when purchasing products and unfair contract terms.”

An independent filmmaker gets fed up with the way the secretive movie industry’s ratings board does its work. So he tracks down its members and makes a film about its deliberations…

The Academy Awards are supposed to represent the last word in Hollywood quality, and to make a practice of honoring the best, not just the best-connected. But a quick glance through the best picture winners of the last two decades shows another side of Oscar. It would appear that Academy voters are absolute suckers for shameless tear-jerkers, and will always reward raw emotion over substance and relevance. It’s that preference for over-the-top melodrama that explains how Forrest Gump beat out Quiz Show, how Saving Private Ryan lost out to Shakespeare in Love, and it’s also the reason that such thought-provokig films as Syriana, Munich, and Good Night and Good Luck haven’t got a chance against Brokeback Mountain.

As horror films become ever more violent and gruesome, the PR reps whose job it is to get us to the cinema to watch people being tortured have developed an almost amusing strategy. Rather than shying away from controversy and claiming the high ground, studios and promoters do whatever they can think of to upset a few easily offended people and use the supposed outrage to promote the gorefest as some sort of oddly subversive experience. In fact, scandal has become such a reliable predictor of financial success that in Hollywood, “controversy is cultivated more often than it occurs naturally.”

It’s been fairly well proven over the last decade that, not only will Americans pay $4 or more for any 25-cent coffee drink that comes with a Starbucks logo, but we’ll also buy pretty much anything else sold alongside the lattes, no matter how peripheral the connection to coffee. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that Hollywood is jumping on the Starbucks gravy train in an effort to boost DVD sales and promote its new movies.

The New Montreal FilmFest lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in its first run last summer, and with two other major film festivals ongoing in the city, a merger with the smaller Festival du nouveau cinéma has been rumored for months. But with a self-imposed deadline for the New Fest to retain its primary sponsorship looming, there has been no substantive progress in merger talks, and Festival du nouveau cinéma appears to have little interest in rushing towards a partnership merely to rescue a less successful rival.

“Musicland Holding Corp., among the nation’s most prominent music retailers, filed for bankruptcy reorganization after years of losses and relentless competition from superstores such as Circuit City and its onetime owner Best Buy.” Musicland operates Sam Goody, Media Play, and Suncoast Movie stores across the country. “Musicland’s woes began a decade ago, as its mall stores saw its customers siphoned away by the rapid growth of big-box retailers where prices on music and movie releases often are $3 to $4 cheaper. The advent of downloading songs from the Internet further pressured in-store sales.”

It’s finally happened. “The best American television is better today than the best American movies… Adequate is what movies, these days, are above all required to be: tasteful, familiar and safe. The schlock of the past has evolved into star-driven, heavily publicized, expensive mediocrities that carefully balance novelty and sameness… Television not only offers writers the chance to create nuanced characters but also to follow them on deeper journeys than any two-hour film could offer.”